About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

We report on the fabrication and characterization of straight dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polaritons waveguides doped with lead-sulfide quantum dots as a near infra-red gain medium. A loss compensation of ~33% (an optical gain of ~143 cm−1) was observed in the guided mode. The mode propagation, coupling efficiency and stimulated emission were characterized using leakage radiation microscopy. The guided mode signature was separated using spatial filters in the Fourier plane of the microscope for quantitative measurements of stimulated emission.

Figures (4)

(a) Experimental setup. A beam-splitter (BS) is used to combine both laser beams. (b) Active DLSPPW. The small circle in the left represents the size and position where the probe laser spot was focused to couple into a DLSPP mode inside the waveguide and the big circle corresponds to the pump laser. (c) Schematic of the Fourier plane showing the three main contributions: the gold-air SPP (1), the incident beam (2) and a straight line that corresponds to the guided mode signature (3). The shaded rectangle represents the spatial filter used in the experimental setup and only (3) reached the detector.

(a) LRM image of the DLSPP mode propagating along the waveguide. (b) Intensity profile of the guided mode along the waveguide. (c) Guided mode power plotted for different values of the probe laser power in the absence of the pump laser.

(a) Stimulated emission measured for different powers of the probe laser. Two values of the pump irradiance are also shown. (b) Stimulated emission dependence measured for different values of the pump irradiance at fixed probe power. Two different values of probe laser powers are plotted.